State inmates in work programs get paid for community service they don’t perform and may be getting sprung from prison early based on hours they didn’t work, The Post has learned.

The Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) gives nonviolent inmates in 41 prisons a chance to cut their prison sentences by one-sixth if they perform 400 hours of community service and meet other requirements such as getting an equivalency diploma and substance-abuse treatment.

The program, in which roughly 2,500 inmates clean highways and parks, maintain Little League ball fields and repair senior centers and churches, has been touted by Gov. Pataki for rehabilitating convicts while helping the communities in which they work, reducing the 70,000 inmate population and curbing prison violence.

But internal documents obtained by The Post reveal work crews are routinely shut down while inmates collect their pay and get credit for community service.

“They’re closing the crews down on a regular basis,” said Joseph Green, a business agent for the NYS Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association. “On any given day only half go out. How many are out there walking the streets who didn’t meet the criteria?”

Records from the Butler Correctional Facility in upstate Red Creek show between three and seven of the 15 work crews there were closed over four days last April.

One crew of five convicts stayed at the prison the entire week of May 12, 2003 – but records show they were each paid for 30 hours of work.

The problem stems from DOCS policy of refusing to fill in for sick, vacationing or injured officers and opting to just keep the work crews inside, Green said.

DOCS spokesman James Flateau admitted the crews are shut in when guards are out and that it would waste taxpayer dollars to pay overtime to ensure inmates get to work outside.

“It’s called prioritization,” Flateau said. “It’s called managing your work force. If there’s no staff to take them out there because [an] officer [called] in sick, [we’re] not going to send them out there.”